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CPB vo Major funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the following funders. archive Is it the 1" tissue that we are concerned about, or is it the dead woman on the motel room floor. And this is the dead woman, from the files from Doctor Milton Helpern the medical examiner New York City. Gordon I had a subscription to MS Magazine It was probably in 1973 or 4, something like that, when in one of the issues there was an article about abortion and there was a picture that was in with this article and although it didn't name any names, it dawned on me that this was the picture of my sister. And I thought, well, how could MS magazine get this picture. You know, who did they know or how did they know to go to get this picture. And I'm still curious about that. Gratz I was really in a state of shock for a couple of days earlier this year when I had the first phone call from someone asking me if I recalled where the photograph, how the photograph came to be used for this article and that the sister of the victim was seeking to find out. I mean it just sort of hit me. Suddenly, this photograph came to life in a way that it had never done for me. Gordon I don't remember exactly when I got the purse or who gave it to me, but I imagine it had to be somebody from the police department that gave it to me and it was just, it was shocking to me that this is all there was that was left of her. And I put it away and didn't look at it ever again until just recently and I still can't believe that's all that she left behind beside her two kids. It was a waste, what a waste. Gordon We grew up in South Coventry in Connecticut in an old farm house and did all the typical things that country kids do. We didn't have a tractor. We didn't have all the fancy equipment that people have now. We did of course a lot of hand weeding and hoeing, worked with the horses. Everybody had to work in the garden. I mean that's something little kids could do very easily. So that was something she had to do. Things like gather eggs and feed chickens. The ordinary things that all farm kids have to do. It was large family. I had ten brothers and there were five of us girls. I was right about in the middle. So there were four younger than Gerri. Being the youngest girl made life a little bit easier for her. And I always remember one of the things she used to do when she was very, she used to love to climb trees. She was a tree climber. If there was ever something that had to be done that she didn't like doing and we all have things we don't like to do, you'd look around and find her in a tree. Gordon Keep moving son. Twerdy Hey. I ain't signing no release on all this stuff. I want to make some money on this deal Gordon I used to have to milk cows by hand when I was a kid. But not in the morning before we went to school because my father said "no". Twerdy Oh yeah, I used to milk cows too. Gordon Yeah, I know. Twerdy Gerri used to have to do the chores. Remember, she'd do the chores. Gordon Yeah. Twerdy Then she'd run back to the house and hurry up and get all the hot water. Then us guys would have cold water. Gordon Good for her. I bet Gerri never had to milk cows at all. Twerdy I don't know, I was too young. But I remember, I remember that she used to hurry up and get all her chores done and run back to the house so she could have hot water. Gordon Yeah, yeah. Twerdy She used to keep the house so spotless. The floors you could eat off of. She would wax them and then us guys would come in from working outside and we didn't think anything of it. Gordon Of course not. Twerdy We'd walk across the floor, you know, to get a drink of water and maybe had a little manure on our feet or something and she'd get so mad and my mother would try and tell her, you know, just clean it up don't worry about it. Gordon Yeah, ma was pretty easy going. Twerdy Yeah, it didn't bother her to much. Well after fifteen kids, I guess nothing would bother anybody huh. If you had fifteen kids, it wouldn't bother you. Gordon Yeah. Twerdy But she was always - she was very meticulous when she would do things around the house. Everything had to be just so, you know. Whether it was dusting or waxing the floor or whatever, you know. It was sad, it was sad. Carboni I met her on the bus the first day of school. And I got on the bus in the seat, all by myself. Everybody knows everybody on the bus so I'm petrified. So hers was like the fourth stop before you got into Willimantic and she got on the bus and my seat was vacant and she sat next to me and that's where the friendship came. And all the way through high school, I mean, we were inseparable. I mean we just was Gerri and I. And then we started together working at Electricmotive in Willimantic. It was a factory . They made condensers for radios, that stuff. We worked night shift, after school and I saved my money and got a car and that's how I got that '49 Dodge. Back in the 50's you had to wear dresses to school. I mean it was pants were unheard of on girls. So we always had our jeans in the car. So we'd sneak out between study periods or out to the car, get in the car, change our clothes from dress - I mean we're in the car of course laughing. Everything is funny back then. Everything when you're young is funny. And I mean we got caught playing hooky together quite a few times. Brought to the principals office, you know, laughing away. We went out on dates together. The Windham Diner was the place where we always headed up down to have coffee. We'd sit in the window in the diner and the fellows would drive in and we'd wave to them. It wasn't like now a days. I mean you could do just about anything and nothing would ever happen, back in the 50's. She came from a large family. I think when you come from a large family, you have that tendency to be more togetherness., well you have more people to talk to, that's it you're more outgoing. I'll tell you one thing the Twerdy's could do though, oh play piano, I mean, sing, and they could play music. I mean and western and Walt could play that guitar. Gordon My parents had a big circle of friends that were from the old country, from Russia and the Ukraine. Of course, we were Russian and we used to do these Russian dances and my mother made costumes for us and we used to go to parties and we used to wear these, we used to have these like stage shows. And she and I would perform Russian dances in these costumes that my mother would make for us. My father used to whistle these tunes and she and I would dance to them. It was really neat. Gordon And then a couple of years after that I was married and so we kind of lost touch. But, she met Sam and her friend Joyce was getting married and so Gerri wanted to get married. Carboni I was going to get married. We had set the date for September the 25th, 1954. And Gerri was always razzing me, all the way through, that she was going to get married before I did, like teenagers do, you know, you always - I'll beat you. And I said that's impossible because I was engaged but she said she was going to get married before I did. You mark my word, I'll get married before you do. And she called me one day and she says that she was going to get married. And I said, to who? Oh, she said, I met this nice fellow. Now she met him somewhere I'd say in, we graduated in June, so either met in July, the end of July, or maybe August. His name was Sebastian Santoro. And of course is Italian. My husband's name was Salvatore Carboni and they both were named Sam. And she met him at a bus stop. And she did beat me by one week. She got married September 18th. The Saturday before I did. And she didn't know Sam. Carboni So they knew each other about three weeks, maybe four weeks, and she married him. So that's why I say she, she said she was going to be me, but I said how can you beat me, you don't know anybody. You know what I mean. I know it sounds crazy, but she came, she said I'm getting married next week. I said, you are, where did you get him, you know. He was, odd to say the least, he was set in his ways. He was a chauvinist, Sam was. I liked him. I liked Sam, but he was, he was odd. He was put in an orphan's home when he was very young because his mother had, now, he had a brother Joe and two sisters. But in those days, if you, a woman, you couldn't get a job or anything like that, um his father died, so she put the two boys in the orphan home and kept the two girls out. So needless to say, he had about nil opinion about women. He should never have gotten married, Sam shouldn't have. He was the type that was doom and gloom, always downing everything. I mean, he didn't like this, and he didn't like that. You talk about a bigot, I mean, he was, I think he hated the blacks, the Jews, I mean everybody you could possibly, because he hated himself. I mean Sam was a very, he didn't like himself. So when you don't like yourself, you hate everybody else, right? That's how Sam was. And Gerri was the type that she loved everybody. She didn't care what color, what any. I mean, cause that was the thing she used to talk to me a lot. She said, I just can't stand the way he talks. I know what he used to say to her. He used to call her family a bunch of commies, because they were Russians. He'd say those commies. Most of time I, when he talked, I didn't pay any attention to it. But, being Gerri, and her family being Russian and Polish, it, you know, that's what he used all the time. Gordon They lived on the second floor of an apartment house. That's where I really remember when she was really having a lot of trouble with her husband, when I'd see her with black and blue marks and she was really pretty much of a mess a lot of the time. And she always had excuses why she was black and blue, like she fell down the stairs, or she tripped, or she slipped on the ice or she fell at the bowling alley and hit herself with the bowling ball. And I thought pretty strange, you know, she's right handed and all her left side was all bruised. And then things, you know, it began to dawn on me what was happening, what was going on. Twerdy He was uh, he was an older brother. You know, when you're a young kid on a farm, you respected your elders and that was the way we were brought up and you looked up to him and you know, and I didn't, but then as I got older and started seeing different things, I formed my own opinion of the person and it wasn't the greatest opinion in the world. But you know, when I saw him abusing my nieces when they were just young children, four and five years old, and I mean giving them severe whippings, spanking. They were spankings, they were with a belt. Take his belt off and just wale the hell out of their fannies. You know, you say to yourself, jeez, what's going on here and then you start putting two and two together and then you go back and you recollect the bruises on her face and on her arms and so forth and on her legs and you say to yourself, you say well jeez, these are not coincidences. There's something wrong there. He had sinus problems and he used to work in I think it was First National warehouse, in the meat department. And he'd come home and he had these sinus headaches and the kids had to be quiet, you know. Couldn't make any noise, couldn't be jovial, couldn't be happy you know and carefree and all this stuff. And, you know, that's a heck of a way to have to be brought up in a household like that. Gordon And she said, this was his reason for his outbursts, you know. This was why he had these outbursts and he became so angry and he just couldn't stand the noise because of the pain and so on. And this is why he said they should go to California because the weather was better there for his sinus condition. Carboni Gerri did not want him to go. I mean there was, there was. I wasn't there when they would argue over it but she would tell me that they got into quite a few discussions. She said I'm not moving to California, I don't want to live out there. Gordon He convinced her that he would be happier in California and she would be happier in California if he was feeling better, if he was feeling well. Carboni And he flew out and she promised that she'd come out as soon as he got a job and he settled down. Twerdy She took me back to, I think it was Fort Dix, New Jersey. I came home for a weekend and she was going to California. So she dropped me off and she drove off to California. All by herself. Well, herself and two children. I mean she's, you know, she was a very strong person. There aren't too many people who would do that. You know, two young kids in the car and drive off to California. Griffin Blare Our first trip out from Connecticut, we had a station wagon and my sister and I would sleep in the back and we'd wake up in the middle of the night and the stars would be out all over the place and my mom would be driving along, still, just driving along. It was, it was fun, it was fun. She made a long, horrible trip, fun. She always smelled like juicy fruit gum, always. Don't remember her smelling like cigarettes, but I know she smoked. It's the juicy fruit gum. Went to get her purse, it smelled like that. Kiss her good-bye at night, she smelled like juicy fruit. I vaguely remember her dancing in front, it must have been American Bandstand or something, in the living room with us. She had a green dress, I remember that. She went out to a New Year's Eve party or something with this, to me, it still seems like the shimmering emerald green dress and it was tight and beautiful. Griffin And she, you know, she was a little chubby but she always had a really nice figure. Anyway, she was just, in my eyes, you know, I would look and she was a full figured woman. She looked good. When, when there was thunderstorm, lightening and thunder scared the hell out of me when I was a kid and she used to let me get in bed with her and I would be freezing cold and she'd just like tuck my hands in the rolls of her belly to keep my hands warm in bed with her and then I was able to go to sleep because then I wouldn't be afraid and I wouldn't be cold. Blare Griffin She made Halloween costumes. I remember that being wonderful. To this day, I insist on making Halloween costumes that I have no time to do because that was one of the few memories that I have that were good. And we'd come home from school and it would be partly finished. We couldn't wait to get home the next day to see how much farther. And we never knew what we were going to be. Every year since the day my oldest daughter was born, I make Halloween costumes. I make them from scratch. No store bought Halloween costumes. They have to fitted perfectly for my children. My mother did that for me. Gordon Trying to be objective, it's pretty difficult when it's your kid sister. But I think while she was out there, she probably was beaten as many times or as much as she was when they lived in Connecticut. And from the sounds of her letters, she was very unhappy. Griffin I heard my mom in their bedroom, and she was screaming and I went in to see if she was OK and that's when my father told me that they were playing a game and that it was all for fun. He was on top of her with his hands around her neck and my mom, um, she was, she was crying and she was screaming but as soon as she saw me the whole tone and the whole attitude of the crying and screaming changed. Often my father would say he was just playing with my mom, they were just having fun. And she went along with it. She would back him up. And I wanted to believe that. All kids want to believe that everything's OK. But I think we saw enough, both my sister and I, to know that it wasn't really fun for mommy. You know, it was just a game that daddy played and he liked it, but she didn't like it. And he did hurt her. And so, as much as we wanted to deny it, when she was leaving, it wasn't like we questioned what was happening. We just kind of went along with it. We came home from school, and the car was packed. There was no playing, there was no phone calls, no saying good-bye to daddy, no saying good-bye to friends. It was in the car and we're going on vacation, we're going back to Connecticut. Blare We left with nothing, I realize now. My mother could not even, I mean, she didn't even have gas money sometimes. It seemed like just to get back to Connecticut. Gordon And then, lo and behold, she was there and he was not there. She came back with the kids and told me that she just couldn't stand it any more, she just refused to stay with him. She lived with my mother and father and the kids lived there with her and it was quite all right with my mother and father. They had an extra room and so Gerri and the girls shared a room and my mother took care of the kids when she was working. Griffin Judy and I shared that bedroom. And I even remember that bedroom right after my mom would clean it. It was a neat room. And it was real sunshiny cause of the windows, the way the windows were in the back of that bedroom. In the mornings my mom would come in and let the shades, they were those old fashioned roller shades, and she would lift those shades up and the sun would just come in the windows. And out in the country, the grass, you know, you could smell the grass, and everything was fresh and bright and oh, it just, and I remember loving life then. Gordon Well, the kids went to school and she went to work. And she got a job at Mansfield Training Center. It's a school for mentally retarded or handicapped children. She took care of patients, you know, did the usual things, changed the beds, and cleaned the kids up and helped feed them and stuff like that. Carboni Meantime, this is where Clyde comes in, cause Clyde Dixon worked up at Mansfield. And she used to tell me about this fellow, oh he's so much better than ss, you know, this guy talks, she says. He's intelligent and he really likes me. But, they weren't going out or anything like that. She just would say that she worked with him there at Mansfield and he was so different than Sam. So I mean, I could understand when I met Clyde, it was such an entirely different type of person. A very nice person, I mean, though he was using her. I'm talking about, she saw in him totally opposite of what Sam was. And I really couldn't blame her. She would come down the house quite often and she couldn't talk to anybody about this Clyde Dixon, because, I mean, it was she's married, he's married. He'd tell her all these wonderful things of just how wonderful - in fact, when I used to talk to him at the bowling alley, he was one of these very soft, I mean he could talk. This guy was a talker. Very good, very smooth. Nothing like her husband. I mean this guy could, well he talked her in ta bed, you know. He was that type of person. I mean she even used to tell me that when she married Clyde, there was a place for the girls to run around in. They would have their own room because it was a big house. This is how he strung her along, you know. Until she got pregnant. Carboni She came down the house one day and she says to me, your husband works out towards New London. See if he can't get some ergot and I said, well what is ergot. And she says, well this friend of mine, she says is pregnant, she's going to have a baby. And she says, she's married and she just can't afford to have another baby. And I thought, uh oh., you know. When someone says it's a friend of yours, and I felt like saying, and this day I would have said, don't tell me it's your friend. But back then, I wouldn't have . But I thought, well, she'll tell me. Time had gone by and she talked about this friend steady and I still didn't come out and say, come on Gerri, which I should of. I should of said, if I did, she'd have broke down. She'd have told me. And why she didn't want, I don't know. Maybe she was afraid Sam.... I don't know. Why she didn't confide in me. And I tell you, I was hurt. I was more agitated. But I thought she just was pregnant. I thought I had time for this. I'll want to wait. If she doesn't tell me, I'll just confront her. Cause I thought I have time. Gordon I really didn't know much about Gerri's life because I was married and I was raising a family of my own. And very busy with that. We lived about 26 miles away from each other. So I didn't see her as often as I would have if we were close by. It had dawned on me that she was pregnant. Because, you know, a woman's body changes. Her breasts got larger and she was staining. Her shirt was stained one day. And then, I knew. I knew then and asked her about this. And she said yes and of course she broke down and cried and told me she didn't know what she was going to do. She couldn't possibly have this baby because of course everybody would know it wasn't Sam's and if Sam found out, he would probably kill her. Carboni I finally says, if she's not going to tell me, I got enough nerve up, I'm going to go over and see her. I remember it was a day I was working with my mother in the snack bar and I says, it wasn't busy, I'm gonna go over and see Gerri. And on the way over, I had all this courage that I was going to say to her, come on I know it's not your friend. Gordon She told me that she had this friend that she was seeing, the father of her baby, had a friend who knew somebody that was a doctor and they maybe could get her some medication. And she said that it was ergot that they would get for her to help induce and I told her that no, it was not a good thing to do. It was dangerous to do that. I knew nothing about ergot or any of these kinds of things they used to induce childbirth, but I knew that it was dangerous to have an abortion at that time. Gordon And I had gathered together about $700, about $725, something like that. And gave her this money. And I expected her to go away the very next day. She said that she would, you know, take the kids and she would go out west and she would find, maybe, a Catholic Charities or some organization that would help her. And I really was thoroughly convinced that this was exactly what she was going to do. But somebody convinced her otherwise. Carboni So the day I went over to see Gerri, I remember coming to the front door, knocking, and she just says come on in. And I walked in the front door and she was laying on the couch and she looked terrible. She was all broke out. She never got up. I sat in a chair and I said how you doing and talking and I was going to say, how's your friend. How is your friend. Is she still pregnant. I had it all ready to go and she says to me, oh by the way, she says, you know that friend of mine, she told her husband and that's been all taken care of. She didn't have to have the abortion. She didn't, she's all. And I said, oh that's good news. And looking at Gerri, in my mind, I thought she had an abortion, but she's not going to tell me. And I said, well I didn't care. This is finally over with, this is it. So we sat there talking and she says, evidently it was all totally finished with Clyde, cause she says Sam, I've been writing to Sam, and Sam's coming back. Gordon Hello, I'd like to spend my vacation at the beach with out girls. I think they would like it. Any two weeks in August would be preferable. Maybe at the same place we went to before, Sound View. Hope the girls are over their colds. Sam. My love to the children. Griffin The night my mom died, she was going, I believe it was bowling. For some reason, and I don't know whether it was just a coincidence or what, but I decided that I had to go with her that night, I had to go with her that night, and she wouldn't let me go. And she had let me go bowling with her before, but this night she would not let me go. And I copped a little fit and she said no and before my mom got ready to leave for her bowling night, my cousin Debbie covered me up in the back of the car. I stowed away in the car, in the back seat on the floor, and she put a blanket over me and I wanted to go with her. And she caught me back there. She found me there immediately. As soon as she went to go in the car, she saw me and made me go in the house. Desk clerk My name's Delores O'Connell and I did work at the Norwich Motel as a desk clerk in the evening from six to eleven. And I would say around 9 o'clock or 9:30, this woman came in and registered. She had a car parked across from the office but she went over to her room which is directly across from the office. And she stayed in there about maybe five or ten minutes or so, anyway, not too long. And she came back out and she went back in the car and she drove off. At eleven o'clock, I left. And if she parks the car in back of that building, you couldn't tell until she came to the front of the building. But people are in and out of the rooms, so you really didn't know who was going in what room and all unless you were really watching. Gordon The night that she died, I wasn't at home. I had gone to visit my brother and I didn't know what his telephone was. And I told the kids when I got there, I would call back and give them the phone number. And I didn't call back right away. When I called back to tell them what the phone number was at my brother's house, there was a phone call from Gerri, and they said that she was crying, but that she would call back later. And of course, it was too late. Chambermaid Rose was downstairs, and ah I would work upstairs. Sometimes all the rooms weren't taken and whoever got through first, we had to go and help each other. There was three of us working at the time. And what a surprise when I opened that door. And I was shocked to see that body on the floor, next to the bed, blood all over there. And I think there was blood on the bed and she was, her color was very bad, so I knew she was dead. And so ah, I ran out and called to Rose and she came up and we went into the next room and she called Fred. Fred notified the police. Gordon And my mother called and ah told me that they found Gerri's body and they wanted me to go to the hospital and identify her. To see, you know, if it was really her and I said, well no, it's impossible, it can't be. Because I think Gerri went on a trip. And she said, well the police want you to go to the hospital. So then, of course, I became frightened and what could I do but go to the hospital to see. And sure enough, it was her. Carboni I pick up the Norwich Bulletin. The Norwich Bulletin came out very early in the morning. so it was an early morning paper. And right across it, there was the headlines that a Coventry women, and I'm going to start crying again, 28 years and I still do it. The first headlines, it was that day, it didn't say anything about an abortion, nothing, just Coventry women found dead in Norwich Motel. You instantly know, she had an abortion, it killed her. I mean I just, I remember going, running around the house, screaming. I was the one that called the police department. I called Colchester Department, you know up here where the police department, and I says, cause I had to find out, was she pregnant, and they said she was. I said how far along was she and she said six months. And I started screaming, you know. Carboni See, I'm getting August, August, that's when Sam was coming in. No wonder she had to have the abortion cause of Sam coming, that's about when the baby was due. She knew better. She knew it would kill you, she knew. But she was desperate. Sam would have taken the girls. I mean, back in those days, she would have never saw them again. But that's how desperate she was. Because Sam was coming back in August. I don't think an hour went by and the two detectives came to the house and they wanted a name. And I remember one guy saying, one detective saying, she have many boy friends. And I said, she wasn't that type of person, and she wasn't. I mean, you know, there was only one name I could give and that was Clyde. Papp He went to a friend whose wife was a doctor and obtained some information as to how to do an abortion, was able to borrow some tools, speculum and forceps, that sort of thing. And I believe he had some sort of a doctor's book that gave some explanation of how an abortion might be accomplished. And my recollection is that, according to what he told us, he was attempting to perform and abortion, by a as I recall, inserting a catheter into her cervix. She died. He panicked. And he left. The next morning he went to Hartford, Connecticut, sold his car and took off, ending up in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he ran out of gas and money and turned himself into the police there. Louie Lowkoswki and I, during our trip to Morgantown, West Virginia, took a very lengthy statement from Mr. Dixon, in which he confessed to his part in attempting an abortion which ultimately ended up in the death of the Santoro girl. Twerdy I think it was Peggy that called me and told me that Gerri died and then she said, no she was murdered. And, she says, no I'm not kidding Uncle John, she says. And then she told me what happened. Just like somebody stabbed me in the heart. Blare I remember throughout this time asking, you know, where's my mom and crying and crying and saying, my mother's dead, why won't you tell me. They had a little pear tree on the side of their house. I remember leaning up against and crying and saying, my mother's dead. Griffin They were waiting for my dad to come to be there with us when they told us. And I vivid, vividly remember him, remember him coming around the curve of the street and walking up Debbie's driveway and, you know, the flowers were in bloom along the right hand side and, you know, we'd been playing on the porch coloring pictures, and the bees were around the honeysuckle. The whole porch had the bushes around it and that's where we were coloring when he walked up and then we walked back down the hill to my nanny's house. And my nanny actually told us. Blare In fact, they told me she died in a car accident, that's what they told me. That she had been hit by a car. Griffin I knew for a fact that it was not an accident, a car accident. Because we picked up her car and it was intact. And when I questioned that, the car accident suddenly became a walking accident where she was hit by a car in the street. It's like this memory that I've had all my life of that bedroom in my nanny's house. When my mom died, it's just, literally, it's a visual picture in my mind of that shade back in that corner just going down, just going down. Carboni So, I went to the funeral. After that we went back to the house. I didn't talk to Sam too much in the house cause there were so many people in the house. And finally he says to me, who was this guy that got her pregnant. And I said Clyde Dixon. And I remember, he looked straight ahead, and he said, I remember Clyde, I worked with him, he was a nice guy. My husband said, I'll kill the..., you know what I mean, there was no animosity toward him. Gordon I never met Clyde except in court. I saw him. I never spoke with him. I would have like to have spoken to him. I still would like to talk to him today. He must have known that she was dying. He could have called the hospital, he could have called the police. Even if he left there, he could have called the police or somebody and they, somebody, maybe might have saved her life. Griffin What about that phone call that she made? Do you think that she would have called out for help if Clyde was in the room? I mean, do you see what I'm saying. That's the kind of phone call somebody makes when they're alone and nobody else is there to help. And the fear that that woman had to feel, alone. That's the part probably that bothers me more than anything is that woman was alone and she had to know she was dying. Papp He pleaded nolo contender which is an admission of, throwing himself upon the mercy of the court, is a technical reason for pleading nolo contendre that it can't be used in a civil action whereas a pleading of guilty can be, which I am sure his attorney advised him. And essentially, it's a plea of guilty. And then he was sentenced. He was sentenced to a year and a day, not less than a year and a day, no more than three years. Gratz This woman was the victim of a criminal abortion. Her body was photographed exactly as it was found by police in a blood and barren motel room. This individual woman has come to represent the thousands of women who have been maimed or murdered by a society that denied them safe and legal abortions. One has to remember that this was a very early moment in the abortion debate and the abortion opponents were just beginning to use the fetus in the bottle images. It was a very effective photographic campaign. And we just didn't know how to balance that campaign with anything. You know, how, what is, has always been the answer to aborted fetuses is dead women. Gordon I was pretty shocked to see this. To see what a horrible thing it was. Because I never saw the picture before. This was the first time I had seen it and, you know, brought all of these horrible things back to my mind that I had been trying to forget. Which, I think, we all tried to do that. We tried to forget some of the horrible things that have happened to us. But reading this article brought it all back. And I had very mixed emotions about it. Griffin I saw the picture of my mom in MS magazine and that was, Leona showed it to me when I was returning from Europe. I was around 17. And until then, I had, it had never been said, the words had never passed anyone's mouth, that my mother had died from an abortion. Other than my sister, who didn't really know, but she thought she knew, and I believed her, so we both thought we knew. But there was nothing confirming it until that day. And that day, Aunt Leona confirmed it. How dare they flaunt this? How dare they take my beautiful mom, my beautiful, beautiful mom, and put this in front of the public eye. And who gave them permission. I was pissed. Gratz We had no knowledge of any of the personal detail around it. I don't even remember knowing where it was, you know, the location of the site. None of that seemed relevant. I don't know that any of us asked. It was so gruesome, I don't think any of us wanted to know and anonymity at that time was the rule of the day. Carbine Were we by the use of this photograph exploiting, for the second time, this woman I mean because that really was a, that was a serious and a very thoughtful part of the conversation. But it did not seem to me at the time and it did not seem to my colleagues, that we were per se, on the face of it, invading her privacy, since she was not recognizable. Gratz I wish I could remember if I even knew where the photograph came from but at the time, at the first time I saw it, I was just, I was struck, I mean I was horrified by it. And yet it said so much of what we were trying to say. There were so many sources that I was using at the time for writing about this issue, that it could have been any one of them. And it could have been a medical examiner's files. Cause I talked to officials as well as people in the movement, or whatever. Papp Milton Helpern was the chief medical examiner in New York and we used to depend on him. In any real serious case, we would bring the evidence down to him and he would review it and we had him up here to testify. He at the time was considered the eminent authority in the world on criminal pathology. He was the expert on autopsies and pathological investigations and material would have been provided to him by the state's attorney, by the state police, anyone that he might have asked. It may well have been how the picture got released. Griffin I would feel better to think it was sudden and that she didn't have to lay there and be alone. But I don't believe that's what happened. I believe she had some time to think. Because the way the rags were in her hands, you know what I mean, this was a woman who wasn't just sitting about and suddenly collapsed. This was a woman who was in the throws of dying and was doing what she could to stop bleeding and stop, you know. From that picture, that's what it looks like. Blare It's come up in conversation a couple of times. More or less, have you seen that picture, Judy. What have you thought. And I hadn't and had never really felt compelled to go look for it. In seeing it, just like with the news clippings, it may sound cold and callous but it doesn't move me a lot. And so the wounds that I may have have healed to a certain degree and I'm sure a lot of anger has gone away and was hasn't has been suppressed and I've dealt with it to the point where it's almost like it being another person. I don't think abortion is right. Mainly because I believe that life begins at conception. Regardless if it's a viable fetus or not, it's a life form. I didn't always feel that way. I must say that at 15 or 16, whatever age I was when I did have an abortion, I didn't think any way. And certainly, we have a right to a choice. A god given right, for a lack of anything better to call it. That's why we're given a brain and certainly I would never want someone to tell me what I could or couldn't do. I honestly believe that I will be judged for the abortion when I was a teenager. As a Christian, I believe I've been forgiven for it. Whether I've been punished for it, I don't know. Whether I will be punished for it, I don't know. But that's something that I believe that someone should think about when they make that decision. Gratz And I have to tell you, when I saw marching on the street, a placard with that photograph, I was stunned. And I remember saying to my daughter, look at that photograph. That's the photograph that I used. And she said she had seen it. But I was unaware that it had begun to crop up in other places. The power of the picture has proven itself in ways we never dreamed. That it's become something of an icon for the whole issue is extraordinary. Gordon When I first saw this picture in the magazine, I was shocked. Especially when I thought of how could they print this picture without my permission or somebody's permission in the family. Then I thought, well, I don't think there's anybody in my family that would give this permission. But as years went by and I thought of it from time to time, I thought, it was good that it was printed. And that it was an honest thing and that people should see this. Griffin Now, it's still every bit as tragic of a picture and it's still pretty rotten that my mom has to be exposed to the public eye that way but, that's for her sake. Cause I would want people to still remember her as beautiful. I wouldn't want anybody to have an ugly image of her. And you look at some woman lying there dead and those who are against abortion think of her as some scum and she was not. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman and that can happen to anyone. Gordon OK Gerri, you were an OK kid. You were a tree climbing kid. I'm too old to do this bending over bit, you know. CPB vo Major funding for this program was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 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